Sample Chapters

BROWN JADE

Chapter One

Malaya 1958

 It was six o’clock in the morning. The air was cloaked in a mixture of sleep and body scent. Jen crept out of bed and fumbled her way down the rickety stairs and into the kitchen. Standing on tiptoe she ran her fingers along the top of the larder for a box of matches to light a candle, but she wasn’t alone.

There were spiders weaving intricate patterns across the larder to the windowsill. Cockroaches scurried across the mud floor and disappeared into cracks in the wall and holes in the floor. Rats the size of cats drank from the puddles dotted around the water urn. They looked at Jen with disdain and carried on drinking. A dog howled and barked in the distance. A cacophony of cock’-a-doodle-doo followed in rapid succession.  

Jen, quite unperturbed, picked up the blackened kettle and sat it down by the urn. She removed the heavy wooden lid with both hands. Plunging the jug into the cold water sent a shiver down her skinny body. Jug by jug she filled the kettle.  Squatting by the clay stove she gathered a handful of wood shavings and placed them on the slatted grid. Finely splintered firewood was carefully arranged over the shavings before several large chunks of charcoal were positioned around them. Jen struck another match and fed it to the kindling. She gently blew on it as smoke started to rise. As the firewood caught alight and the smoke gave way to sparks she stood up and stifled another yawn.

While the kettle was boiling she headed for the back door. The rusty bolt and the heavy wooden hinges creaked, squeaked and squealed like cornered pigs before springing open like Jack-in-the-box. Jen stepped out into the cool clean air and walked towards the bottom of the garden. In one corner sat a raised wooden shed that served as a latrine. In the other corner, enclosed in a three feet high concrete wall was a well.

Jen climbed the couple of steps and stood on tiptoe to reach the catch. As she threw the door open the whiff of human waste smacked her in the face. Instinctively she pinched her nose and held her breath. Squatting awkwardly over the bucket she distracted herself by pulling a couple of newspaper squares from a hook and crushed them in her hands. It was the best way to soften them before cleaning herself with them.

She leapt out of the latrine and let the door slam behind her, took a deep breath and walked over to the well. She found a bucket with a sturdy rope tied to its handle. With one hand she held on to the end of the rope, and with the other she threw the bucket into the well. Jen looked down into the dark shimmering surface of the water and was pleased to see the bucket cut the surface like a knife. The pull on the rope informed her that the bucket was filling up. She hauled it to the surface, and with a grunt and a tug she landed it on the ground beside her. As she half carried and half dragged it indoors the cold water splashed over her feet making her flinch.

Her morning wash consisted of more splashing of cold water on her face and arms and rubbing down with a small towel that the whole family shared. There was no toothpaste in the tin, so she took a few grains of salt from the larder and rubbed them on her teeth and gums. She then peered at her face in a small cracked mirror hanging on the wall by the window. Screwing her eyes up and pulling faces was also part of her morning ritual. It helped to put her face back together again after the wash in cold water. Jen didn’t like her face too much but she was pleased that she had no spots unlike some of her classmates. In a few months time she would be a teenager, Jen wondered about her future.

The rising steam from the boiling kettle interrupted her contemplation. She turned the fire down by shutting off the air vent on the stove. Jan made the coffee and replenished the two thermos flasks with boiling water. Next she threw another large lump of charcoal into the stove to keep the embers going till lunchtime when her mother will cook their main meal. She refilled the kettle and set it back on the stove to catch the rising heat of the smouldering coals.

The dawning of a new day threw shafts of hazy light onto the dappled and uneven mud floor. Jen looked down at her feet; the wooden clogs were worn down to a thin plinth. The pink plastic strips that held them to her feet had loosened allowing her toes to poke through the edges. She must remember to ask her mother for a new pair for her birthday she thought.  On second thought she hoped to receive a new pair for her thirteenth birthday. It wasn’t the done thing to ask for a present, not in her family anyway.   

It was time to get her brothers Tam and Lee out of bed and ready for school. Jen sighed heavily. She left her clogs on the bottom step and climbed the stairs bare feet careful to avoid the wobbly treads and loose nails waiting to trap her callused feet.

Chapter Seventeen

Left alone with her thoughts Lian shivered and shook for several minutes. She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. Snapshots of her past swirled and whirled into her thoughts unbidden and unchecked. She was too tired and sick to censor any ugly dramas that past through her internal theatre. Her breathing became more hurried, but she felt strangely peaceful. Slowly and quietly hot salty tears rolled down her face. As the tears increased her breathing slowed and in a dreamlike state she wiped her tears with the back of her hand like a child waiting for her mother to rescue her.

            There were no sound, just tears and thoughts. She was sixteen again. Her mother had called her into her room to speak with her. Old Mrs Tang was a wiry four-foot ten of nervous energy. She had a slight stoop and tottered on her bound feet around the house like a caged animal. Old Mr Tang, her father, was an elusive and silent figure, He only came home once a week to give his wife housekeeping money to ease his conscience. The rest of his life and time was spent with his second mistress. Lian’s parents had been married for nearly forty years but for thirty of those years he had lived with his mistresses. Lian had often wondered why her mother had her so late in life and unusually for the times why was she the only child.

Lian stepped into the dim interior of her mother’s room; Mrs Tang was sitting on edge of her bed. The smell of liniment was coming at her from every wall.

‘Lian, sit down,’ her mother waved her towards a chair by the bed. ‘I have something to tell you. You are now sixteen and it’s time we found you a husband,’ Mrs Tang said not looking Lian in the eye. ‘I’m getting old and -your father said he had approached a match-maker…it’s been arranged for you to be married to Old Lau’s youngest son.’

A shiver shot through Lian. She remained silent, too stunned and afraid to speak. She tried to catch her mother’s eyes but Mrs Tang was looking at her hands that were resting on her lap, all wrinkled and engorged with veins treading an uneven path to her fingers. ‘Mother,’ Lian finally found her voice, ‘you have not been well lately, would it not be better for me to remain with you, to look after you. There’s plenty of time to find me a husband…when you are better,’ Lian said with as much conviction as she could muster.

‘Daughter, I would like that if I could, but you father have made the arrangement. You mustn’t let your father down,’ Old Mrs Tang said, her voice more timorous than normal.

A sudden surge of energy lifted Lian off the chair, ‘She faced her mother, NO! I will not do it!’ she cried.

Old Mrs Tang kept her head down. Her shoulders shuddered and she let out a long low groan like a trapped animal, it went on for ages. Lian looked on in shock. The mother she knew was a placid and timid woman not given to angry outbursts. She took a step backwards and fell back into her chair. For a long while neither spoke, the hush in the room threaten to engulf both of them.

‘I’m sorry Mother,’ Lian said and slowly lowered herself down to the ground until she was kneeling directly in front of her mother.

Old Mrs Tang lifted her head slowly until their eyes met, ‘ Lian, I’m sorry it had to be this way,’ a sob escaped from her pressed lips. ‘There are things that I should have told you before…but I couldn’t,’ her sobbing had become more insistent and she stopped to wipe her face on a handkerchief. ‘You see, I…I can’t have children…’

Lian thought her mother was so upset by her defiance that she was talking gibberish. ‘Mother, you don’t have to tell me anything, you are tired, take a rest and I’ll make you some herb soup…’

‘No Lian! You must listen to me, when I am dead you will never find out the truth. You are not my daughter!’

Lian felt as if her mother had slapped her a hundred times. Numbed to her bone she sat back on her heels and put her hands out and covered her mothers’. ‘I…I…I…  don’t understand what you are telling me Mother!’ she stuttered, tears not far behind.

The old lady seemed to have shrunk even further in those few moments; she withdrew her hands from Lian’s clasp and wiped her eyes vigorously. After tucking her handkerchief up her long sleeve she stood up and turned her back on Lian. With both hands she gripped the headboard to stop herself toppling over on her three by two inch bound feet. ‘You are the daughter of our father’s last mistress, she died soon after giving birth to you; your father said I should bring you home to live with me. I cannot have children, I have to accept that he must have a mistress to bear his children,’ she sobbed quietly.

Lian was still kneeling on the floor and felt safer to remain there; her foundation in life had been severely shaken. The message her mother had just imparted sounded distant and unreal. Soon she was crying quietly too, but unlike her mother she didn’t have a handkerchief to wipe her nose. Now she understood why her father rarely spoke to either of them, her mother for being barren and Lian for reminding him that she was the cause of his mistress’s death.

‘Mother, can’t you forbid him, he cannot marry me off like a pig to market,’ Lian pleaded.

‘I’ve tried. He threatened to stop the money for our food. I have no money of my own.’ She turned round to face Lian, ‘don’t knee there, I don’t deserve it, sit on the chair,’ her voice broken and pitiful.

The heavy burden of knowing that the woman whom she had called Mother all her life had asked you not to kneel before her because she didn’t deserve it must be the ultimate punishment for both of them. Lian got up and looked at her mother closely. Long hair pulled back into a bun and pinned into the nape of her neck. Eyes heavily lidded with hardly any sparkle in them. Wrinkles grooved her face and the corners of her mouth were turned down in a permanent disappointment.

Lian was silent, but she felt a rising rage threatening to explode. She was unsure how to comfort her mother and soothe her own anger. With great effort she spoke to her mother calmly, ‘Mother, you sit on the chair, I want to talk to you before it’s too late.’ Lian held her elbows and steered her onto the chair. ‘Please tell me everything.’

Old Mrs Tang sniffed and let out a long deep sigh. ‘When I was sixteen your Father came back to fetch me.’

‘Fetch you from where?’ Lian interrupted.

‘We were both brought up in a little village in Guangzhou. My father and his father were in business together. He agreed that on my thirteenth birthday I would be betrothed to his business partner’s youngest son. Your father is five years older than me. When he was sixteen he left home, joined a boat and came to Singapore. He met a man who gave him a job in his kitchen, but his boss died two years later owing a lot of money to his enemies. They threatened to cut your father up and feed him to the dogs, so he ran away to Malaya. He started his own restaurant with the money he  saved and when I turned sixteen he came back to China to make me his wife.’ Mrs Tang paused as if in a trance.

‘And then what happened?’ Lian asked.

‘What else could I do but followed him here. I only had two changes of clothes and no money when I left my parents house. I though I was lucky to be married to a man with a restaurant, I would always have food to eat. But the Gods hadn’t endowed me with the gift of children. I prayed everyday to have a son, but years passed and nothing happened,’ the sadness in her voice was palpable.

Lian flinched when her mother said that she prayed for a son. Another hundred slap to her face. But she couldn’t be angry with her mother for she had been kind and had taught her to sew, read and write what little she herself knew. ‘What…when did father…how did he meet my birth mother?’

‘After ten years and still no children, your father got impatient. He said he wanted a son to inherit his name and fortune, that was what he said,’ she pulled her handkerchief out and dapped at her eyes. ‘He met her at the restaurant, she was helping in the kitchen.’

‘Did she give him a son?’ Lian felt her anger thudding against her ribs. It wasn’t the kind of question one asked one’s mother but being angry made her reckless.

Her mother nodded. ‘Her first-born was a son. He was ten years old when you were born. She was in poor health and didn’t want another child but to please your father she had you.’

Lian shut her eyes and imagined the horror of her mother dying soon after giving birth to her. What was her name? What did she look like? She has a brother! Where is he now?

But to her mother she asked, ‘have you ever met my birth mother?’

She nodded. ‘I saw her lying in her bed, she was very sick, she was crying when she gave you to me. You were tiny, I was so scared, you were screaming, screaming….’

‘What happened to my bro…to her son?’

‘The second mistress looked after him for sometime. I suppose he’s grown up now…I don’t know where he is.’ The old lady eyes misted over again, she put both hands over her face and pressed her fingers hard into the sockets of her eyes. Her distress wrenched at Lian’s heart.

‘Mother, you are tired, here, let me help, lie down and have a rest. I’ll get you a cup of tea.’ Lian had to get out of the room for some air. She stumbled into the kitchen and stood holding on to the back of a chair. Her legs felt like jelly and her hands shook when she poured the tea from the thermos flask into her mother’s cup.

Sadly that was the last conversation Lian had with her mother. Old Mrs Tang died in her sleep that night. Six months later Lian was married to Lau Chee Kuan. He was ten years older than Lian, a kind and gentle man. For the first time Lian felt contented if not happy. He was a carpenter and he single-handedly built the house that she and her children still lived in. She never had any further contacts with her father since her arranged marriage.

Chee Kuan was a sickly man and nine years into his marriage to Lian he died. The doctor at the hospital told her that he had tuberculosis, and it was at his funeral that she learned that his mother had also died of the same illness.

Being a widow with four young children was an impossible nightmare. Min was only six moths old, and Jen the oldest was not quite eight. She remembered standing at his graveside seeing his coffin being lowered into the hole in the ground, she lost all sense of reasoning and she tried to jump in with him, but was held firmly away by the strong arms of Mrs Ong.

The memories of it all brought great big shuddering sobs. Years of sadness and frustration hit her like sledgehammer and suddenly the room was reverberating with her distressed howling. She howled and cried and howled and cried until the tears had dried up and her throat was sore. Suddenly she remembered the lump in her throat, she felt nervously for it with her hands, there was nothing there. She took a few hard swallows but the lump seemed to have disappeared. Anxiously she took a few sips of the water, whatever that was blocking her throat had definitely gone away.  Reassured, Lian dried her eyes and flopped down on her pillow and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Jen, on hearing her mother’s sobbing had crept up the stairs and stood outside the bedroom listening and agonising. She was terrified but felt as if her feet were nailed to the floorboards, unable to move away. In the end she just stayed there until the room went quiet and then she panicked about what to do next. She pressed her ears to the thin wall when she heard her mother’s hoarse breathing. Very quietly she got down on all fours and crawled into the room, she stayed there for a couple of minutes just to make sure that her mother was still breathing, then she backed out of the room, ran down the stairs, out the back door and straight up the lane to Mrs Ong’s home.